| Article Index |
|---|
| Recording Your Flock |
| What you need to know |
| What you need to do |
| What you want to achieve |
| Costs and Benefits |
| Getting Started |
| All Pages |
1 - What you need to know
Because the results generated from Performance Recording come from both the physical performance of each animal, and the performance of their close family relations, e.g siblings, half-sibs, parents, grand parents and aunts and uncles, it is helpful if you have at least some idea of the parentage of the animals in your flock. Initially this is not always possible particularly if your flock is not pedigree, but it is really helpful if you can even identify the ewes to their respective fathers.
In some cases even this is not possible, but do not let it deter you, you will get there but it may take an extra year or two before the accuracies of the figures come up to a meaningful level. (In UK sheep flocks, accuracy rates of over 60% are acceptable in most traits) Accuracies vary depending on the traits you are looking at. Because litter size and maternal ability are not as highly heritable as some of the other traits, for example growth rate, the accuracies for these traits always appear to lag behind. However the sooner you start the better the accuracies you get in your flock.
